3:45

Opening Keynote: The End of Money

Session Description

Author and journalist David Wolman takes it all back to the beginning—then hurtles into the future. A few years ago, Wolman grew obsessed with the history of physical money. So he decided to run an experiment, forgoing cash for an entire year while working on a book about money’s past and the digital money future. His talk is a “whistle-stop tour of intriguing monetary phenomena,” many of which—Bitcoin, cash’s hidden costs, personal financial management hacks, the massive untapped market at the bottom of the pyramid, and more—have proven to be prescient, and are now central to conversations about fintech and the future of transactions. Wolman will share ideas and insights from his reporting, touching on trends in mobile payments, decentralization, alternative currencies, the psychology of money, and more.